The Gunroom

The Gunroom

This book, written by two officers of the battleship from whose fore-turret was fired the first shot of the bombardment, gives an account of happenings of vital interest and importance. It is absorbing because the truth shines out everywhere, and you feel that for once you are really getting first-hand information as to what did happen. It bridges the gap between February 19th and April 25th (the date of the Great Landing), and of this period we have hitherto heard hardly anything. Besides the valuable nature of the material, this chronicle of great events is written with considerable literary skill. The authors have succeeded in making their log intimate. It is before all things a mans book, and unless the publishers are much mistaken, this originally conceived Saga of the Straits will attract attention everywhere. Late on an afternoon in September a boy, wearing a naval mackintosh and a felt hat, came out of Torquay railway-station and hailed a cab. His figure, his voice, and his manner, which was nervous and a little self-conscious, suggested that his age was about eighteen. He took a handful of change out of his pocket, and, when he had selected from it, with momentary hesitation, a sixpence to give the porter who had brought his luggage, he cast over the few bystanders a look almost of resentment, as if he thought they had been watching and criticizing him. If an older man had intercepted this glance its character might have puzzled him. He would have asked himself how, in eighteen years, a boy, who had obviously known nothing of the poverty and hard usage that age the street urchin, could have made the discoveries about life which were reflected in the face he saw. Not that a mans experience lay in this boys features; rather did he seem to have lost too early the swifter wisdom of a child. He had developed a faculty of suspicion before the years had taught him what he should suspect.[2] He had faced sorrow before he had learned to distinguish clearly between sorrow and bitterness. A childs pride and the humility that springs from discipline; a love of freedom and an acquaintance with restriction; a hatred of cruelty and a knowledge of its refinementsall these had been mingled in him to the destruction of simplicity. He stood there, on the outskirts of the strange naval world into which this cab was to bear him, a boy whose premature manhood might have caused a perceptive woman to fear for him. She would have seen that he was not physically delicate, and have been glad that his body, at any rate, had power to endure; but she would have noticed, too, and trembled for her discovery, that the boys lips and eyes suggested an imagination which could throw ugliness as well as beauty into relief. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 52591
Author: Morgan, Charles
Release Date: Jul 17, 2016
Format: eBook
Language: English